David Tebbutt

Green is finally fashionable. Nowhere was this more evident than at the recent Essential CleanTech conference, put on by Library House. Speaker after speaker enthused about the investment and business opportunities presented by global warming – although they didn’t put it quite like that.

Between them, the Stern Report and Al Gore have stirred us into an visceral awareness of what has been long suspected: that a great deal of human activity is not good for the planet. We are all being made to feel guilty, which spells opportunity for organisations and individuals who can help us salve our consciences while helping their profits at the same time.

Some businesses are acting in response to customer demand, others because it’s the right thing to do – think Tesco and Marks & Spencer respectively. But the motivations don’t matter; the actions are what count. Anything that reduces our negative impact on the planet is good. The big question, though, is where to start: what to do and where to go for good information.

Part of the problem is that no-one has all the answers, least of all governments and universities. According to conference speakers, they are not the best places to look for help. But one very good measure of seriousness is to “follow the money”.

Library House tracks startups from their initial funding to their acquisition or IPO. Venture capitalists are understandably coy about where they are putting their money. It’s usually only years later, when they cash in on their investment, that the trends become visible. But Library House makes a point of finding out what’s going on in real-time and making it public.

Venture capital works on the basis that it gets the occasional big win and a few failures, so investment trends, rather than the specifics of any particular investment, are probably the best indicator of what’s going on.

Solar power, not surprisingly, is an area of great activity, as is biofuel, although this may become less popular as people realise that it can end up trading poor people’s food for rich people’s fuel. The price of tortillas in Mexico has already rocketed because of the increase in demand for corn as the feedstock for ethanol production. Other emerging issues concern the amount of land and water needed to produce the biofuel.

Other sources of information include the Carbon Trust. The very name gives away its focus, but it’s a good place for companies to start cleaning up their acts and, importantly, those of their supply chains too. The general principle is get your own house in order before starting to encourage your suppliers. The Carbon Trust provides practical advice and guidance and it already has experience with more than 170 large organisations. At a more domestic level, the Energy Saving Trust is the place to go.

You may also find it helpful to set up some RSS watchlists and just keep an eye on what’s going on. Use obvious keywords like sustainability, clean-tech and carbon footprint. And go into tagging systems like del.icio.us armed with the same keywords. At the time of writing there were 32,409 hits for sustainability, 1,099 hits for clean-tech and 477 for carbon footprint.

You’ll encounter the usual avalanche of opinionated bloggers, but you can quickly spot those who have original and informative material.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!